Intercomm

Berkeley County Schools adds six national board certified teachers

MARTINSBURG, W.Va. — Six Berkeley County, W.Va., educators are among the nation’s 3,907 new national board-certified teachers this year, officials announced Monday.

Lori Frye, Ryan Lawn, Shirleen Moore, Tiffany Remsburg, Michelle Sexton and Liz Vannoy are among 51 educators across West Virginia to achieve the certification, according to Berkeley County Schools and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

Fellow Berkeley County educators Melissa Burton, Melanie Cox, Julaine Pfund and Dottie Pownall were among 4,446 across the United States who successfully renewed their national board certification, according to the school district and the professional teaching standards board.

There now are 122,034 national board-certified teachers across the country, with North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington state having the largest percentage of educators to have achieved the certification, according to the national board.

In West Virginia, 107 Berkeley County educators now have obtained national board certification, the most of any of the state’s 55 county school districts, the school district said Monday in a news release.

Altogether, there now are 996 national board certified teachers in the Mountain State, or 5.07 percent of the state’s educators, according to figures compiled by the national board.

Among the 50 states and Washington D.C., Maryland ranks 12th for national board-certified teachers with 3,201, or about 5.39 percent, followed by West Virginia, ranked 15th, and Pennsylvania, ranked 38th. The Keystone State now has 1,319 board certified teachers, or 1.09 percent, according to the national board.

“While holding the top spot in the state is fantastic, it is the extreme amount of time and dedication that each of these candidates provided to this process that is most impressive,” Anne Laskey, Berkeley County Schools’ coordinator of the national board-certification program, said in the release.

“Each of these accomplished educators earned the profession’s highest mark of achievement through a rigorous, performance-based, peer-review process, demonstrating their proven impact on student learning and achievement. Our board of education fully supports the efforts of the educators who embark on this journey, and gives its full support to the NBCT process.”

Berkeley County Schools Superintendent Manny Arvon said the certification not only is a great personal accomplishment, but a reason to celebrate the impact on thousands of students across the school district and on the teaching profession as a whole.

“Our board of education, school principals, and administrators recognize that NBCTs are making a difference in their students’ learning, strengthening their schools and their communities,” Arvon said in the release.

In its announcement Monday, the national board said more than 20,000 teachers currently are pursuing board certification in addition to the newly certified educators.

Other than the six educators in Berkeley County, there were no other new national board certified teachers in the Tri-State area, according to the national board’s online database. In Washington County, 43 educators previously obtained the certification, while there have been 10 in Jefferson County, W.Va., and three in Morgan County, W.Va.